A new initiative to bring Scotland’s heritage to the widest possible audience using Soundslides has recently been launched by the National Trust for Scotland. You can view the Soundslide The Bard’s Tale on Robert Burns by former curator of the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum David Hopes below:

A total of twenty Stories are told using a mixture of sound-recording, photography, video and special effects. Each story will be told by Trust staff, enthusiasts or volunteers who work with the National Trust for Scotland. They aim to give an insight into the secret stories of Scotland – the behind the scenes activities that happen on a daily basis but which the visitor might not come into direct contact with. View The Making of Scotland’s Stories below to find out more.

Following on from my recent Pinterest feature, I’ve unearthed another exciting new social media platform. I can already hear the groans from some quarters, but stay with me!

It’s called Storify, and it’s basically a way to tell stories using social media such as tweets, photos, and videos. Users search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into stories. You can basically create your own stories on any number of things, from events to individual objects.

Click on the image to go straight to my very first Storify!

I’ve mainly pulled bits from content I’ve already created, but you can begin to see the possibilities for creating interactive stories which are rich in context.

As with any social media platform, the key is interaction! The more you interact with people, the more you can get back.

As you can see, it’s already being used to cover key events such as the economic problems in Greece, and the Republican Primary race in the US, but I’ve not come across many cultural institutions which use Storify. This is somewhat surprising, when you consider the many possibilities and how easy it is to pull content from all manner of sources.

Described as ‘drop-and-drag curation’, it’ll be fascinating to see if this service takes off in the same way Pinterest has done in recent months.

Needless to say, I’ll be watching developments closely. I’ve already thought of a few interesting ways to use this for my own project. So watch out for the launch of the new Distributed National Burns Collection site in the coming months.